


All Of The Stars

by jemmasimmns (laurellance)



Series: jemma simmons cronicles [9]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Endgame Skimmons, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-01 04:19:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13286835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurellance/pseuds/jemmasimmns
Summary: There’s a door, a riddle and a broken lamp. An apology, an embrace. Something so wholly familiar in their actions.This is the scene: two women at a motel room. Not unlike everyone else at the low end, but there’s no romance. Just talking. For now at least.There are things they say and things they don’t say. This is what they do say: nothing of importance. The general hellos, the goodbyes, truths that takes ten years to process. These are the things they don’t say: I love you. I miss you. I adore you. You are something I can’t live without, and I’ve tried.(Or: Fitz and Radcliffe run AIDA Corp, Jemma leaks information to Daisy and Daisy works to bring AIDA Corp down. Daisy also gets the girl.)





	1. part one: you're the ghost in my bones

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes to mention: FS is tagged because it _is_ a part of the story. It is not a minor tag. I would really appreciate it if you guys were nice in the comments. Thanks in advance.

There’s a door, a riddle and a broken lamp. An apology, an embrace. Something so wholly familiar in their actions. 

This is the scene: two girls at a motel room. Not unlike everyone else at the low end, but there’s no romance. Just talking. For now at least.

There are things they say and things they don’t say. This is what they do say: nothing of importance. The general hellos, the goodbyes, truths that takes ten years to process. These are the things they don’t say: I love you. I miss you. I adore you. You are something I can’t live without, and I’ve tried. 

(Or: Fitz and Radcliffe run AIDA Corp, Jemma leaks information to Daisy and Daisy works to bring AIDA Corp down. Daisy also gets the girl.)

* * *

 

This is not how your story ends, Daisy had once told Jemma, and that moment still remains holy to Jemma. She’s not religious by any means, but she knows she can trust people. She knows she can trust Daisy Johnson, because Daily Johnson has gone above and beyond for her ways she couldn’t comprehend. Daisy’s love for her is a promise, it is a prophecy.

* * *

 

There’s a story behind the body language, in the familiarity of their movements. It’s almost like they’ve done this dance so many times before, this non-stop cycle of dancing from their feelings and the skirting around that they do both mentally and physically. The truth is, they were ex-lovers. A friends with benefits gone wrong, then torn apart by outside influences. Old issues brought up over and over, and here the two of them are here again, one more time. 

One has black hair, has Chinese looking features (but not quite noticeable enough to be called a full-blooded Chinese, only half) and a bag tossed onto the bag. From the half open zipper, there’s a computer in there. Gauntlets. Dark clothing. Her name is Daisy Johnson, but everyone knows her as Quake. The superhero, the Inhuman rights activist that had a track record for fighting xenophobia with vigilante like activities. She’s not here for information this time, but to meet up with an old friend and talk. 

The said friend is a Biochemist called Jemma Simmons. She’s married to Leopold Fitz, and works independently from her husband. Her lab coat is stuffed into her purse, and her sweater is navy blue. She’s beyond tired. 

It’s not the first time they’re in the exact same room, and by the looks, certainly not the last. There’s a tension in the room, a thick and dormant one, one that speaks of a shared history that never truly died. And true to that nature, no one breaks the silence. Too much to say, and not enough time. 

The clock turns nine. The bird chimes nine times, and Jemma clears her throat. “Fitz doesn’t know I’m here,” and Daisy almost wants to laugh, because _of course_ Fitz doesn’t know that Jemma’s meeting the rogue SHIELD agent turned vigilante, and _of course_ Jemma would keep it a secret. 

“Simmons, you could always tell him the truth.” It’s the nicest thing she has on her mind right now, because she’s just as tired as Jemma. Just as weary, and just as distrustful. But whenever Simmons calls, communicates, she always answers, no matter how much her gut tells her no. 

Simmons replies with something Daisy already knows, and it’s the same dance all over again. Simmons is upset for some reason and needs someone to talk to, she’s got some kind of married issue that’s upsetting her, and they never talk about what else had happened. But neither of them leave empty handed, because Jemma always brings information that helps Daisy bring Radcliffe and Co. down, some kind of password or login ID, and it’s always helpful. Jemma would always be known as Daisy’s source from within Radcliffe and Co., and Jemma would always be protected, typically Daisy herself. 

Eventually it moves to more relaxing topics, Daisy’s various take downs against the rise of killer robots, and how much they missed SHIELD before _it_ had happened. Lowercase it, since uppercase It was the thing that possessed Ward’s dead body, and neither of them had really talked about it formally. At least not sober, they had been told from some passing tourists that they were really chatty, and really weird. Jemma had laughed, a genuine laugh, and for one minute, it felt as if everything was okay. 

It’s not okay, it never is. With the way everything had happened, and how badly the turnout of the mainframe had occurred, everything had just sort of fallen apart. Everyone had regressed back to their means, and that meant that Daisy had inevitably returned to vigilantism, not to prove herself, but protect other Inhumans. Fitz gets off relatively scot free, since everyone wants to cover up the damage AIDA caused. 

Everyone’s harmed by it, but sometimes Jemma finds herself taking long showers again. She hadn’t really done that since Maveth, but sometimes she finds it’s the only way to calm herself- to let the water run over her body, let it cleanse her of something she can’t ever shake. And so here they are, these two direct survivors of the mainframe, with the other once again. 

There’s a rumor among the Rising Tide. It’s a silly one, dismissed by most members, but all rumors have some merits of truth in them. It’s other exaggerated or lost throughout the chain of retellings, but there’s always some merit of truth. The rumor is that Daisy’s source is someone closer than the typical higher ups in the corporate ladder, a girlfriend or wife. 

It’s always dismissed, because as far as they know, Quake (or Skye, as she had previously been known) has only ever been interested in men, and never the other way around. Besides, her love life had been such a tragedy that no one had ever thought to consider that there was some merit of truth in that statement, and that was protection. 

When Daisy hears the rumors, she laughs. They’re true, yeah, but Jemma’s a sometime fling. She wished Jemma was her forever, but she knows Jemma would never be her forever, not as long as she lived. 

* * *

 

There’s an small lab that’s located on the outskirts of town. It’s a sleek looking building, hidden between the edge of a dark forest and trees that shed autumn leaves onto the walk ways. It’s run by a Jemma Simmons, a British thirty year old with brown hair. 

It’s known for studying Inhuman’s humanely, and is credited for being the top lab in the country that produced Inhuman research. The research is through, clear and concise. The lab also hosts a dual function: it’s basement is used as a room for whatever, a term coined by the realtor, who had described the previous functions of the basement, storage, getting high, where gamblers gambled away their life savings, among other things.

As of now, the room served as a living room type arrangement. A more accurate description would have been the Room of Requirement in the year Voldemort had control of the Ministry, and so it looks a bit like military barracks. There are a series of beds tucked into the corner, for people to pass out on, a small bathroom with a functioning shower for cleaning up, and lockers for keeping extra clothes in case it was needed. Sixty percent of the time, they were needed. The other forty, they were kept there in case someone they knew needed clothes to change into.

Working late happened often there. People would come in and out at all hours of the day, leaving for some emergency or another, talking on the phone either calmly or almost shouting, or just discussing the news. As Inhuman rights were being discussed, the left would talk of expanding them, and the right would talk of taking them away, curing them in the loosest sense possible. 

There’s one good role model that everyone at the lab knew, and that had always been Quake. A fierce Inhumans right activist, she had often taken it to herself to defend them, often not through peaceful processes. The number of people who had been harmed by Quake had deserved it, as someone there had said once, for being awful human beings.  No one disagreed. 

* * *

 

The story picks up back at the same motel. It’s the same talk, expect that talk eventually turns into action and using the Queen sized bed for something other than a place to store bags. It’s better, and certainly much more enjoyable, and is something much more genuine. Not that that had been particularly hard, with how real life went. The time is the only change there is, because it has been two weeks and neither of them are remorseful about it happening. 

Jemma glows. Daisy’s grinning, and her joy is contagious. They’re in the bed next to the other, and it’s Daisy who speaks up first. “Hey Simmons, I thought you were _married_.” She says the statement in a teasing tone, and Jemma laughs before kissing Daisy once the lips. 

They’d gotten into the habit of doing it, although neither had specifically known why. They leave the way they came, new clothes on, and the old ones packed in their bags as they pretended to not know the other. 

* * *

 

When Jemma arrived home, to the house she and Fitz lived in, she found flowers by the door. There is a name, addressed to a “Mrs. Jemma Fitz” from a sender unknown. The flowers are a bouquet of multicolored Daisy’s, white and yellow daisies decorated with the occasional red daisy. Jemma holds the flowers to her chest and inhales their scent, as if they mean something to her that no one knows.

She takes the flowers inside and puts them in a vase. They’re fresh, this beautiful bouquet of flowers, and Jemma’s tempted to tuck one of them behind her ear. 

She smiles wistfully, as if she were lost in a daydream. Daisy Johnson, swooping into her dreams, like a romantic suitor that she would have loved to marry if the times were right. But they hadn't been, and so she had married Fitz. Mostly. She didn't tell him about her midnight romps with Daisy, and really, she was glad to in exchange for leaking information from her husband’s place of work.

 _One day_ , she tells herself, and that is that for the time being.


	2. part two: haunted by you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which backstory is given and Daisy thinks about Jemma.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What goes up must come down. When there is a movement in one direction, there is a countermovement in the other direction. And so, as AIDA Corp rose, a great empire of growth and business investment, so did a sense of stability. Properness. The old secret whispered in living rooms, times idealized for their innocence and progress while ignoring the unmistakeable stench of wrongs and fouls.

 _The stock market is doing great_ , says a man in wistfulness as the price of his Apple stock rises. _The economy is doing great_ , says the CEO making more money than ever. The DOW grows at unprecedented rates. _In God we trust_ , proclaims the evangelical pastor preaching on a Sunday. The number of children couples have doesn’t decrease as much and everything looks better from the surface.

The downside of this stability, however, is in how it treats those that aren’t as fortunate. Strikes end in unemployment, unions are as a principle despised and any sort of civil unrest is treated as an inconvenience. Hence, the treatment of Inhumans.

* * *

 

Like any fiercely argued social topic, inhuman rights were political football. The Left supported them, introduced legislation, argued in favor of human rights, dignity, respect. Discrimination should not be tolerated and punished, Democratic Senators would argue on CNN, while citing reports and stories as to relate to why.

There was, as usual, the same response on the Right. It’s unnatural, fix it, ban it, lock them up as thieves and thugs, Fox News argues in the same vein they blow the dog whistles of racism hidden under states rights. Breitbart runs reports on the dangers of Inhumans and how they’re freaks of nature. _LOCK THEM UP_ , reads the Drudge Report after one particularly bad case of an Inhuman who had just discovered their powers. 

Quake is a particularly big case in this aspect. She’s revered on the left for what she’s able to do  and who she fights to protect, but even then it’s sometimes muted, sometimes with the personal opinion that while yes, they understand the need to fight xenophobes, there are nonviolent ways to do it. 

Daisy’s seen the coverage. She pulls it up on her apartment from time to time, between her occasional shifts bar tending at odd hours. Which, really, it suited her great. She worked primarily as a programmer for the bar’s website and moonlighted as the person that could fill in from time to time. 

She can’t escape AIDA Corp in the news, the live press briefings they’d host showcasing their newest technological advances. _It’s all built on blood_ , she wants to scream, the remains of the framework being used as a viable way to showcase just how AIDA Corp was changing the world.

The face of AIDA Corp didn’t matter. What did was that it was built off of the greed of Radcliffe, encouraged by Fitz, creating the horrifying, destructive reality of the framework.

* * *

 

Well, maybe Daisy should’ve explained more. After they’d gotten out of the framework, after the pain, terror, trauma and bittersweet it had caused, everything had just sort of fallen apart. They had all drifted apart in their own ways, retreating to their natural habits at ease. Jemma and Fitz came along slowly, piece by piece, and Daisy endures more worrying pseudo-lectures slash rants from Jemma about how she’s worried it’s going to affect Fitz. Jemma soldiers on without worry, carrying with her hurt after hurt as if it was nothing, as if she were epitomizing the sacrificial lamb. 

Robbie and the Ghost Rider’s deal went into effect, and so he was, for what it was worth, gone. She’s seen Robbie around every so often, but it’s rare. She does try and help Gabe our however she can, but it’s anonymous help, and the internet is so big that there’s no trying to figure out who is who. That was the plan, anyway.

The collective thing SHIELD had was take a step back. Jeffrey Mace, The Patriot, was dead for no good, discernible reason as far as the world could tell, and it hurt SHIELD’s image more than anything else. They’re so unstable, the consensus goes, look at what happened to their director. Dropped dead, for no obvious reason. It must have been espionage of some kind. 

As for the team, they went their own paths. Coulson took it to himself to operating from the shadows once again, Mack found work as a mechanic, Elena would join him in his breaks from her job in the local church and May took a break to take care of her parents.

As for Fitz and Simmons, the usual. They got engaged, then married and while its all nice, Daisy still can’t get over just how _white_ the wedding was. Ivory tablecloths, cream colored ribbons everywhere silver glitter decorating the floors in beautiful carelessness, as if it had been curated to a certain sort of aesthetic. White roses in light vases danced the tables in strategic spots, with the occasional lily placed between the roses as if to add a sort of variety to the bouquet that needed life to it. It had been a spring wedding, all things considered, and she had been the maid of honor. 

Now, Daisy reflects, it was probably bad form for the maid of honor to want to kiss the bride.

* * *

 

The wedding had also brought along, created, other things Daisy had to worry about. It had been a fairytale wedding that Jemma had wanted, as she gushed to Daisy about she terribly excited she had been to finally walk down the isle, and somewhere along that line Daisy had realized, Jemma wanted a happily ever after. She wanted the kisses and love confessions in the rain, she wanted the traditional proposal where Fitz would declare his eternal love for her, the kind of love that transcended everything.

And clearly Jemma’s union hadn’t been picture perfect because one day she called Daisy to meet her at a rundown, shit hole excuse of a motel. The motel had been called The Hub, and the room number was on the first floor, the ninth room. Jemma had called, leaving the vague message _For Bad Girl Shenanigans_ , and somehow that meeting in the motel had turned into a midnight romp and rendezvous. Daisy certainly wasn’t going to question it, not when Jemma was asking. 

She would have done anything for Simmons. Thus, making it harder to ignore her feelings. At first it had been easy, ignoring how happy she was around Jemma, how she’d catch Simmons in some lighting and think, wow, Jemma Simmons was beautiful. And therein lie the heart of her dilemma: the love that Daisy had for Jemma wasn’t the uncomplicated kind, the one that went ‘I-love-you-only-as-a-best-friend’, the kind that meant supporting your friend through breakups and engagements and deaths in the family, but rather the _other_ kind of love. The kind that spoke of going to the carnival together and playing the games just to win the biggest teddy bear for your partner, the promises of forever whispered into the darkness like a secret only the two of them knew, the kind of love that spoke of breaking into a fancy swimming pool in a five star hotel after hours and just enjoying the company of the other. 

So every Hollywood cliche there was. 

* * *

 

When Daisy had realized this for the first time, her reaction had been simple: _well, fuck_. Because no matter how you spun it, you couldn't shy away from the fact that she was falling in love with her best friend. Which by itself, isn't bad. It’s natural. It is bad, however, when that friend is recently married and that brought in the complications. Major complications.

* * *

 

 **DAISY JOHNSON (8:53 PM):**   The Hub, 4th floor, room 4. If they ask your name, tell them that you're here to meet someone. It’s urgent.

 **JEMMA SIMMONS (8:53 PM):** Noted. Shall I flash them my bra as well? 

 **DAISY JOHNSON (8:54 PM):** Jemma, I think they know.

 **JEMMA SIMMONS (8:54 PM):** Black lace or red lace?

 **DAISY JOHNSON (8:54 PM):** Black lace. Bring your own shampoo this time, my land lady keeps asking me why I need to buy extra. Says she never sees my boyfriend around.

 **JEMMA SIMMONS (8:55 PM):** Your land lady isn't the smartest person around, is she?

 **DAISY JOHNSON (8:55 PM):** Hah. Not by a long shot. See you there, Simmons.

 **JEMMA SIMMONS (8:56 PM):** I’ll be waiting.

 **DAISY JOHNSON (8:56 PM):** I’ll get there first ;)


	3. part three: once upon a dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the first meeting is replayed, Jemma reflects, and her and Fitz talk. In no particular order.

_Oh tell me, what does it feel like to be haunted by ghosts?_ Is that what they call it, ghosts? Pain, heartbreak and agony? Haunted by the kisses of past loves, waking up in cold sweat because Jemma can’t, _can’t_ lose someone else, not after everyone she’s already lost. Fitz is by her side, sleeping soundly, snoring on his pillow. 

And so she watches the sunrise, because sleep is as elusive and turbulent to her as time has been: trickling away like sand from her fingers, something she knows is there, something she knows is real, but she can’t grab it. It’s not tangible to her, it’s not present. It’s a world away, a reality away, the ebbing of something she can’t grasp. 

For heavens sake, she’s a scientist. She’s a biochemist and she’s one of the brightest people in her field. She went to college early and joined SHIELD to explore the world, to discover all the curiosities of the world. All the natural wonder of the Incas, of the Amazon, of exploring the wind life knowing she could get swept into a nearby river if she wasn't paying attention. The greatest cities of North America and Europe: the cobblestone lined streets of London, weaving by like they were all but blurs, the unevenness of the steps, creating scenarios where she’d have to be cautious where she walked, the bright and blinding lights of New York City, where vulgarity and the honking of impatient taxi drivers blended in with the progressive politics that defined New York State, the beauty of The Statue Of Liberty, a gift from the french that stood as a beacon and bastion of freedom, liberty and individual rights for all. At it’s base, a poem inscribed: _Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!_

Oh, how the lights blinded. How they spun in dizzying wonder, how they shone persistently, as if they had been telling her ever so subtly, come and be free. Come and all your burdens will be wiped away, and you can finally breathe among all the radiant titans that shone in the skies like beacons reaching out to whoever needed them, a life line forever in the horizon.

Perhaps that was what love was, Jemma mused. Dancing among the lights that blinded until she was stumbling aimlessly, without direction, holding Fitz’s hand as they giggled and whispered secrets into each other’s ears, telling each other the secrets they held in their hearts, the quiet symphonies of joy and grief and confessions of honesty, staying in bed because she didn’t want him to stop holding her. 

She’s happy with Fitz. She had told Daisy, and everyone, that, time and time again, flooded their Facebook feeds with throwbacks from when they were at the Academy together, working together in the lab, casual kisses on hikes, their wedding photos, their fairytale wedding that she had worked so hard on, because she wants happily-ever-after, she wants a life of affection and enjoyment from a partner that’s willingly to give it her all, and in return, she would too, the thrill of falling in love every day, of waking up and knowing she’s made the right decision.

But lights, lights hide the casual ugliness that lie beneath it. They hid the grime, the tears, the blood that had to be shed. The bitterness, the hatred, the petty feuds, the resentment that came naturally if she wasn’t careful. They hide the sacrifices that must be made, the trips that aren’t taken, the tears shed in the shower because the best place to break down is always the shower, and it feels like rebirth in a way, hot water exploring the body while tears ran down her face without care for appearance, because when she comes out of the shower, it was like it never happened.

But the sun is rising, and so she stares intently at the single red sun rising from the east, watching it’s ascension from the darkness of the night, chasing away the gremlins that hid in the dark, the demons that haunted her dreams and painted them with her regrets in vivid color. 

* * *

 

She’s already made breakfast for both of them, a piece of toast, butter and a fried egg for each, when Fitz comes down yawning, his hair all over the place. He has his slacks on, his shirt half buttoned, and his hair barely combed. Fitz had always had bad bed hair, much to her amusement.

“Mornin’ Jemma.” Fitz tells her, still rubbing his eyes in exhaustion. “When did you get up?” She passes him a cup of coffee, black, because Fitz would need it for work. He had meetings into the late evening, and it wasn’t a guarantee that he would make it home. They tended to drag on and on because half the executives, by her count, liked to beat the statistics of AIDA Corp’s success into the ground. They were expert mansplainers. 

“I woke up early,” Jemma tells him, as she sits across the table from him. “I was careful not to wake you when I got dressed.” She had set her clothes by the door so if she needed them she could easily slip out of the room to change in a nearby bathroom. 

“Jem, you didn’t have to, I can manage on,” a stifled yawn and, “four hours sleep.” 

“Oh, Fitz. You need as much sleep as you can get. Otherwise, how are you supposed to get through today? You have a full day.” She worries about him, but she is glad he has a driver. It makes life easier for her, knowing that he isn’t driving himself to work everyday. 

“Yeah, meeting after meeting after meeting. Bloody exciting, that is.” Fitz grumbles as he straightens his shirt. 

“We’ll have the weekends to ourselves, just the two of us together. We can watch television or rent a movie, go out for drinks. I can leave for work Monday late, I doubt anyone will notice if I slip in during lunch.” Jemma suggests, smiling fondly at him.

“The two of us in the house, no guests.” Fitz tells her as they clear their plates away, “I want to spend time with my wife.” He kisses her on the lips and goes to get his tie from upstairs. 

* * *

 

When the driver comes by to pick Fitz up for work, she’s at the door ready to go. He gives her a goodbye kiss, sweet and tender, and she can’t it feeling like it stung a little.

There had been thoughts, suggestions pushed aside, that perhaps she was rushing it. That she wasn’t giving her relationship with Fitz the clearest judgement, that perhaps she wanted to spend more time to herself, to learn to breathe and deal with all that happened by herself with the aid of her friends one phone call away. She had dismissed them at the time, ignoring them because the more time she spent by herself the more it felt that she was tainted. Tainted by her inability and failure to save people when she could have, she dreams she could have, but she could not have changed their minds even if she wanted to, gained by blood that wasn’t hers. Tainted by a constant feeling that she should have died long ago, that she should not have lived when others had died.

She’s happy with Fitz, it’s a good marriage. It’s healthy, it’s stable, it’s a source of joy she can tell her mum and dad about, because they always seemed a little concerned. Her mum had asked her once, during the engagement, why she had been trying so hard to make her wedding perfect. _Jemma darling_ , she told her while brushing her hair out of her face, _if he’s the right man for you, he will be happy with whatever your wedding looks like_. _You’ve always tried harder than everyone else to appease, it’s alright if you have second thoughts about what you’re doing_. 

When Jemma had asked why, her mum had told her: _because you don’t look happy, Jemma_. 

She had protested that at the time, telling her mum that she wanted a perfect wedding for her fiancee and her, that perhaps what she wanted wasn't what her mum wanted. _I’m perfectly happy_ , she had argued back. _I’m marrying the man of my dreams, the man who has loved me forever, the man who has loved me from the very beginning, and I am proud of that_. She adds, quieter. _This is my happily ever after, this is for me, not him_. She had broken down into tears onto mum’s soldier, not knowing exactly why she was crying, but knowing it was a mixture of wedding planning stress, second thoughts on her decision as a whole, and then going back to the apartment she shared with Fitz and having to cook dinner, Fitz was busy, when all she wanted to do was to scream, was to be able to relax for once.

* * *

When she gets to work, she finds that no one was particularly focused on investigating the genetics of Inhumans. Some of her scientists spent the whole morning playing the crossword on their copes of The New York Times, and others turned on the TV to ESPN to watch recaps and analysis of why the New England Patriots continued to win despite them being generally disliked. Someone stuck their feet on their desk, leaned back on their chair and played their phones for hours, occasionally cursing out one of their nearby coworkers for beating them in their shared game of pool.

It’s a lazy Friday, but she doesn’t particularly want to work either, so she’ll turn a blind eye to what they’re doing. She’s the boss, after all.

* * *

 

It’s around one in the afternoon when she gets a text from Fitz. She had been reading at one of the magazines in her office, an article on how women taking probiotics during pregnancy might have lower pre-eclampsia and premature birth risk, when her phone buzzes. It’s not Daisy, though she’s not sure why she feels so disappointed that it wasn’t Daisy texting her some corny joke or some awful Facebook meme she shouldn't have laughed at. 

> **LEOPOLD FITZ (1:57 PM):** Sorry Jemma, I’m being sent to the UK for a three day business trip.
> 
> **LEOPOLD FITZ (1:57 PM):** It was a last minute trip, they just sprung it on me. I’m representing the company in a conference.
> 
> **LEOPOLD FITZ (1:58 PM):** We’ll spend next weekend together, yeah? We could rewatch Titanic.
> 
> **JEMMA SIMMONS (1:58 PM):** Are you sure they can’t send someone else? Surely, there’s someone else.
> 
> **LEOPOLD FITZ (1:58 PM):** I’ve already asked, they said they wanted me to go.
> 
> **LEOPOLD FITZ (1:59 PM):** Bloody company, I can’t even spend time with my wife.
> 
> **LEOPOLD FITZ (1:59 PM):** I have to go, another meeting in two minutes. Love you, Jemma.
> 
> **JEMMA SIMMONS (1:59 PM):** Love you too, Fitz.

And so Fitz would be gone, again. She had seen his schedule and it was always busy, _always_ packed with meetings and the occasional press conference. Really, it didn’t feel like she had a husband at all: he was constantly getting on and off cars and planes, phone in hand as he talked business and looked at her admiringly, and one second he was here, the next he was gone. 

Like a real ghost she could grasp. One second, he would be there, and the next, gone. Vanished without a trace, carrying two suitcases and a briefcase and he would get into the car and leave. She would always kiss him goodbye as he left, wave until he was out of sight and go back to house, feeling like it was too big for her. Too big for her bones, too big for taste. Like it was lead weighing in on her, a weight that she couldn't get rid of in spite of how she tried to lessen it.

She wasn’t sure it had counted as a proper marriage, not really. They had had their honeymoon, rented a cottage in Perthshire for two weeks, and it had been lovely, pure bliss. Just the two of them, alone, together, for two weeks, and nothing in the world they had to worry about.

But the ghosts, they came and went. Guilt, a psychologist would diagnose it, but she would know what they would say if she had told even a quarter of what she had went through. Sent into a planet home to an astronaut who had escaped being bait for a parasitic Inhuman, the same man would die for her, and how she had weeped, how she had grieved, how she had held out hope when every fiber in her being told her, screamed at her at he was gone, because everyone good she loved died. They always left, and she was always helpless watching them leave, going down a tunnel to return as volcanic rocks, dying so she could escape, leaving in a car time after time, one last tear-filled glance across a bar, and she had always been incapable of stopping them.

Survivor’s Guilt, they would diagnose, but Jemma knows this. Because she knows the battle between her head and her heart, and neither of them knew what was to be done. Science had been used and abused, manipulated to create unspeakable monstrosities, and her heart, foolish, jaded and still hopeful, it beat on, steady, one after another, never ending, never ceasing. 

She had loved and hated her heart, loved for what happiness it had given her, and cursed it when all that consumed her was the loss of her loved ones, her body shaking as she cried, because she has lost someone she could have saved for the first time, and it hurt, an ever present open wound she wore on her sleeve, the first ghost she carried.

And when that honeymoon had ended, life moved on. She had a husband instead of a fiancee, she had a ring and a changed last name. And nothing had changed, not quite, not until she had started looking deeper into AIDA Corp. Fitz had helped build it from the ground up, using some of the old tech him and Radcliffe had worked on together. 

It had been around the time she had first contacted Daisy. Fitz had been busy that evening, he wouldn’t get home and so she contacted Daisy. Called her more like, remaining elusive and booking a motel room in The Hub. What happened afterwards, she smiles at the memory. 

* * *

 

The meeting had begun with Jemma sitting on the edge of the bed, switching between pacing and looking at the clock anxiously. Daisy slips in through the door, room key in hand and her bag in the other. The bag is placed on one of the legs of the desk, Daisy on the chair, spun around to face her. 

“So, Simmons, what’s wrong? You were unusually cryptic on the phone.” Daisy asks, and Jemma’s struck by how she missed Daisy. She’d missed her personality, her bravery, her heart, her powers, all that made Daisy Johnson her best friend. 

“Surely, you’ve heard of AIDA Corp.” Daisy gives a scowl at that name, and Jemma adds, “I had the same reaction, but _apparently_ , the investors liked the name so much Fitz stuck with it. Awful.” 

Jemma continues. “I was in Fitz’s office one day, and I noticed that he had left his filing closet unlocked. He had some files open on his desk, and they were plans that detailed how they were planning on using the vestiges of the framework code to help the AI function for their products.” 

Daisy looks at her. “You’re kidding right? They’re planning on using _framework_ technology?” Jemma can only nod to confirm.

“God help us,” Daisy mutters under her breath, before thinking out loud. “Has there been anything, any signs or indications of what they're planning on doing? Any lead that someone could’ve leaked online The Rising Tide could track?”

“I haven’t heard anything, I think they’re planning on a big release and revealing it there. God help us indeed.” Jemma responds before adding, “if God were real.”

Daisy chuckles. “The orphanage was run by Catholic nuns, and the nuns hated when we used that expression unless someone had been in a car crash or accident. Otherwise we were using the name in vain.”

“My parents went to church for the holidays and that was the extent of my religious education; I preferred to stay in the lab and conduct Biology experiments over the weekends.” Neither her parents had been particularly spiritual or religious.

Daisy teases, “An early Doctor Simmons then.” 

“Well, yes.” Jemma laughs at the memory of it, at what’d she tell fifteen year old Jemma Simmons, and what’d she want to warn her about. About women who made habits of making martyrs out of themselves to help everyone, about the infectiousness of hope people could bring, about the lessons of heartache and wisdom she would learn. That science wasn't holy, that it was as much a conduit of human use and misuse as anything else was, but rather a tool meant to benefit people instead of hurting them.

Daisy had smiles at her, bittersweet and full of affection, and tells Jemma: “I’ve missed you, you know? I’ll look into it, I’ve been meaning to do it, but they’re smart about their encryption. It’s been stumping the Rising Tide for a while now.”

“I can help with that, pass along information and passwords, information. Fitz trusts me.” Jemma has just now realized that Daisy had worn a worn shirt and that her button up flannel wasn’t fully buttoned, showing hints at her bra. Perhaps Daisy had just forgotten to button it. It doesn’t look that bad, Jemma’s seen Daisy get dressed before, so seeing her friend like this wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that she was interested in seeing what was underneath.

Daisy laughs. “Yeah, he does Simmons. You’re his wife after all.”

“Daisy, can I ask you something?” Jemma asks, leaning in closer to Daisy. She’s missed Daisy more than ever, missed her sense of humor and her wit, missed her being. She’s claimed one of the shirts she took from Daisy’s closet hers. 

“Yeah, you can.” Daisy’s looking at her, and it feels like there’s something more in her eyes, like she’s been dreaming of this and Jemma’s not sure why, but Daisy’s lips looked extremely kissable right now. 

Jemma runs with the instinct, because she’s tired and exhausted from work and coming home to an empty house, and she asks, “May I kiss you?” She pauses. “Fitz doesn’t do it as much and we practiced the wedding kiss in private and I was wondering-” 

Daisy’s kissed her on the lips, and it’s slow and gentle, like Daisy’s been waiting for this, like she’s been dreaming of this. It’s not sweet and somewhat awkward, like their wedding rehearsal kisses when she was tired of Fitz not being around so she roped Daisy into practicing it with her, and she found that she had quite enjoyed it, kissing her best friend. It’s long and shy, like Daisy’s not sure she’d would kiss back. 

Jemma kisses back, and it feels like absolution. It feels like she’s doing something right, because somewhere along the line in their spent planning for the wedding, she had enjoyed those private practice sessions, savored them like a secret for herself, and she was happy. It felt like she had been anticipating it, if the reaction from her heart was any reaction. Like she was finding something she didn’t know existed, like she was finding a piece of herself she didn't know she was missing. 

“Daisy,” she says quietly, “do you want to stay night?” She whispers it, almost as if she’s not sure this is actually happening, as if it was a continuation of a secret between the two of them, like a midnight medley that played a song that just the two of them understood. 

Daisy smiles, brighter than the sun, eyes glittering with euphoria, and she tells her, “I thought you'd never ask.”

“Oh, and Daisy?” Daisy takes the spot next to her on bed, “I like the shirt. I just think,” she unbuttons one of the buttons on Daisy’s shirt, “you’d look better with it off.”

Daisy grins at her like she’s the cat who got the cream. “Your wish is my command.” _Your wish is always my command_ , she wants to say, but now isn’t exactly the time for love epiphany, nor the time for a love confession. 

Jemma kisses her and Jemma’s shirt goes off, as does Daisy’s. The bag sits the in the corner with a change of clothes untouched until morning. 

* * *

 

Work remained uneventful. Jemma left half an hour early, everyone else already meandering their way out of the office or watching the clock every other minute only to find that time had passed slower than expected. Jemma had been tempted to leave an hour early but that would have been too unexpected and so she spent half an hour playing sudoku and the crossword on the back of one of the newspapers that were always sitting around.

The drive back had been quiet, the only noise that accompanied her being the car radio singing ballads of ever lasting love and the importance of one’s inner beauty. She turns it up for Billy Joel’s Piano Man, easily imagining the narrator of the song as Daisy. 

Dinner was a quiet affair, sitting on the couch with a bowl of salad and a container of pasta salad taken from the refrigerator, flipping channels ever so often, before settling on watching the History Channel until she’d end up falling asleep and waking up on the couch the next day with messy hair and a crick in her neck. It had happened in the past, and Jemma didn't want to get her laptop to watch Netflix, so here she was. It was a very enjoyable past time. 

That is, until Daisy texted, and off she was, turning the TV off, putting the containers and utensils in the sink, getting her to go back and grabbing a change of clothes. A pair of jeans, a clean pair of underwear and socks, a shirt and a jacket. A hairbrush, and per the request of Daisy, a bottle of shampoo.

* * *

 

 **DAISY JOHNSON (8:53 PM):**   The Hub, 4th floor, room 4. If they ask your name, tell them that you're here to meet someone. It’s urgent.

 **JEMMA SIMMONS (8:53 PM):** Noted. Shall I flash them my bra as well? 

 **DAISY JOHNSON (8:54 PM):** Jemma, I think they know.

 **JEMMA SIMMONS (8:54 PM):** Black lace or red lace?

 **DAISY JOHNSON (8:54 PM):** Black lace. Bring your own shampoo this time, my land lady keeps asking me why I need to buy extra. Says she never sees my boyfriend around.

 **JEMMA SIMMONS (8:55 PM):** Your land lady isn't the smartest person around, is she?

 **DAISY JOHNSON (8:55 PM):** Hah. Not by a long shot. See you there, Simmons.

 **JEMMA SIMMONS (8:56 PM):** I’ll be waiting.

 **DAISY JOHNSON (8:56 PM):** I’ll get there first ;)


	4. part four: the show must go on

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Daisy dreams of Jemma's wedding and Daisy and Jemma are forced to deal with the aftermath of the framework.

There’s a clock in the room. Tick tock, tick tock, without fail, telling the time as minutes seemed to stretch into hours, and hours seemed to stretch into days, and days to months, and months to years. It held constant, one beat after another, a reminder that no matter what happened, time would always pass, and that it depended on how fast life seemed at the time. Golden days would pass by too quickly, a night at the rodeo turned into five polaroid shots, a beer stained shirt and a cowboy hat from 1967. Dreaded moments would pass with discomfort and glancing at the clock every few seconds only to discover that no time had passed. Waiting in the hospital room, holding a cup of coffee anxiously waiting to hear from the doctors while wanting to simultaneously destroy the white walls of the hallway and tearing hair out in frustration. 

The right hand man of waiting was always doubt. What had happened? Had Jemma cut her hair? Was Mack going to make it back? Were Elena and Mack engaged now? All the questions turn through her like water down a drain, like hammers pounding in her head in never ending construction. 

 _Fuck it_ , Daisy considers after a while. There’s no point thinking things over, not when all that happens is that the doubts and worries get internalized and all that’s gained is a new possibility to tuck into the back of her mind as a worse case scenario. 

And so here Daisy is, in the fourth floor and fourth room of The Hub. A member of the staff had been by earlier, vacuuming the carpet which had already been ruined beyond repair. Daisy wants to laugh at the impossibility of it, of vacuuming the carpet of what once had been a five star hotel long converted into a shitty slum where people conducted business behind closed doors, where alcohol and drugs were as much bargaining chips as money. Here, power and reputation were key.

That also meant, however, no one said a word about who came and went. She’d once seen a group of local councilmen try to work out a deal over the bar, but that had long descended into an argument along partisan lines, the bartender of the week watching with a detached expression on his face. 

If reputation and power went hand in hand, then secrets were the essence of the trade. No one blinked an eye when they saw Quake walk down the hall with a bag, nor when a married woman knocked on the same door and was let in instantly. No one entered The Hub if they didn't have a secret they kept under lock and key, guarded by a thousand and one padlocks and self restraint until the end of their days.

If secrets were traded for the value of gold, then she’d be set for life with a trust fund equivalent to that of the Old Money of the Roosevelts, the Rockerfellers, the Vanderbilts and the Astors. Sadly, that wasn’t the case.

Daisy falls asleep on the bed, head rested on the pillow as she slumbered away without sound and perception. 

* * *

 

 _Kiss the bride, kiss the bride_. It’s Jemma’s wedding day and they’re getting ready for the wedding, which was meant to start at two in the afternoon. The venue had been picked, a catholic church, to Daisy’s amusement. She remembers on Sundays, the nuns would make them wear their finest clothing, or really the clothing that didn’t look as bad as everything else in what clothing they did have, for 8 o’clock mass. If someone wasn't in the pews by the time the sermon started, they’d have to wait by the door, or in Daisy’s experience, take a walk or stay in the dormitory until mass ended. 

 _Sweep her off her feet and convince her to elope with you_. Daisy’s in the dressing room with Jemma, who was panicking that something wasn’t right. The dress needed more fabric in it, there was a minuscule tear on the side that would definitely open the dress up, she didn’t like her make up, her hair wasn’t curled enough, her shoes couldn’t be found. 

“Simmons, Simmons.” Daisy tells Jemma, who was currently checking that her earrings were cleaned, even though they had already been cleaned multiple times already. Her hair was pulled into a loose bun, done by Elena, with a few strands framing her face. The make up was soft, delicate, but it made enough of a difference that she knew it would’ve been a stunner. After all, it had been Daisy who had done it. “It’s going to be fine. Everything’s fine.”

Jemma’s silent for a moment. Deep in thought, maybe, but she closes her eyes as if to calm herself. She opens her eyes. “Daisy?” she asks quietly, because it’s just the two of them in the dressing room, everyone else was already dressed and Daisy had her clothes ready to go. “Do you- do you think I’m ready for this? Marriage?” 

It’s a sincere question and the room feels a bit like a sauna. Where if everything went right, it was just the right atmosphere, but if someone said the wrong thing the mood was killed. “Honestly, Simmons? You’ve been through much worse than this and you’ve survived. Marriage’ll be a walk in the park compared to what we’ve been through.” Besides, Daisy wants to add, you’ll always have me, whether you want it or not. 

Silence again. Jemma tells her _Thank You_ quietly, as if it were a secret that she let Daisy in on, as if it was the hardest thing in the world to admit, as if she needed the confirmation. “I, I don’t feel _ready_ , Daisy. Fitz was talking last night about finally being able to call he his wife and I had a sudden urge to escape.” There’s a stop as Jemma composes her thoughts. Daisy slips on her bridesmaid dress. 

“Daisy?” Jemma asks. “Can we practice the wedding kiss one more time? I want it to be perfect.” Daisy ignores the beat of her heart, ignores the rush of adrenaline that courses through her veins, and nods, replies “Yeah, no problem.”

Daisy initiates it. Jemma’s by the table, expectantly waiting, because every bride practices wedding kisses with their maid of honor right? It’s natural, every woman does it. Slow and precarious, like Daisy’s savoring it, trying to make it special, trying to make it worth something, and at the same time hesitant. As if Daisy were trying to hide something from her, as if she had a secret she wasn’t telling Jemma. 

It’s not fireworks, nor is it the burst of hormones that followed euphoria. It’s sweet, gentle, and at the same time, tragic. As if Daisy didn’t want it to stop and Jemma was trying her best not to let herself enjoy it, as if Daisy’s heart wasn’t racing every time they did this, as if Jemma didn’t relish it like it was a secret between her and Daisy, as if it was holy ground only they could locate, as if it were a siren song only she and Daisy could here. 

The kiss ends. Daisy looks at her kindly, compassionately, and as if she wanted to say something but held herself back. Jemma anticipates it, but it never comes. “So Simmons,” Daisy cracks a grin that never reaches her eyes, “how was that?”

There’s silence from Jemma. Not quite radio silence, but the silence that indicated that Jemma needed time to herself, to mull, to think things over. “I’m gonna go wait outside, see you later Jem.” Daisy replies, almost pointlessly.

 _Promise her you’ll spend forever by her side_. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Daisy takes her clothes and her bag out of the dressing room. May gives her a questioning look. _She wants some alone time. Wedding day jitters_. She tells May, before telling her she was going to grab a bite to eat from a nearby restaurant. There were still four hours left before the wedding, so Daisy could easily spend three of it feeling sorry for herself watching the NFL game nursing a beer while hoping the smell wouldn’t show on the dress. 

Daisy goes to a botanical garden instead. It’s run by an older couple and the entrance fee is cheap. She’s got a half bottle of whatever it was Hunter used to love to drink in her bag, packed above the make up and the clothes and the last minute hair supplies. She wanders around the garden, observing the hydrangeas among the shrubbery, and finds a bench tucked away in one of the corners of the garden. Ivy decorated the walls, covering it in a facsimile green background that looked like one of the scans Simmons would have printed out for lab work. 

 _Whisper to her the burdens of your heart and she will do the same_. An indeterminable amount of time passes, and Daisy looks at the clock, a metal work designed clock that had long rusted over, overgrown with leaves that crept around the metal, as if it were enveloping it with a natural sort of protection. The windows show through sun light that bounces off the clock, as if it were radiating some truth that Daisy didn’t want to hear or acknowledge.

It turns one and predictably, her phone goes off with texts. It’s not exactly good news if the maid of honor takes what could be called a rain check hours before the long anticipated wedding. It’s a nonstop chain of texts and called, ding after ding after ding, like chain mail being forwarded to the point it spammed everyone’s inbox. 

There’s one thing that Daisy pays attention to, from Jemma. A missed call, and a voicemail. And Daisy resists the temptation to play the voicemail as she leaves, things tossed in her bag hazardously as she made her way to the church, it’s side entrance far less intimidating than the front door, with multiple layers of steeps stooping below the overbearing stone that hung over the door like it was meant to scare people in submission, behaving. 

Daisy brushes off their questions, calls it taking a walk. Her bag is thrown in a corner somewhere, tucked away under a box or a dress, and no one says anything to her face. They’ll say it later of course, out of earshot, but for now, nothing. Nothing they wanted to say to her face directly. 

She goes to the dressing room to touch up on her make up and her insides feel like they're eating her out from the stomach out, nervousness filling her like air in a balloon, just waiting to burst. Like she’s holding a damn breath she didn't mean on holding, like she’s walking towards one of the most unpleasant things she’s ever agreed to. 

The door opens. Jemma’s there waiting, looking at herself in the mirror, admiring the dress from all angles. The dress is sleeveless, strapless, and it hangs off her like it was made only to be worn by Jemma herself, clinched at her stomach area with an extra layer of fabric. There are loose embroideries around it, decorated in a floral pattern. The skirt hangs around Jemma with a pool of fabric around her feet, almost as if it were made to imitate the ripples of a pond when it was disrupted. Jemma has on diamond earrings, just the right size, and make up light enough to highlight her face and put the focus on her eyes and lips. 

Her doing, Daisy wants to comment, as she looks into one of the nearby mirrors to see if her eyeshadow needed touching up. The lip stick would come last, as always, and so Daisy tweaks her eye make up a little, extends her eye liner and adds some more mascara. 

There’s a relaxed atmosphere in the room, like earlier didn't happen, like either of them didn't need the breathing room to clear their heads. And right when Jemma leaves, she hugs Daisy tight, squeezes her like there are things she wants to say, there are things she wants to express, but the wedding is coming shortly and they're simply out of time. It’s almost like Jemma didn't want to let go, and Daisy didn't want it to stop.

Jemma leaves, and all Daisy can think is that everything had changed. That, for better or for worse, this was a sendoff, this was a goodbye. It breaks her heart.

 _It’s a love story, after all_. The wedding goes on without a hitch. Jemma’s dad walks her down the isle, beaming with joy as he gives his only child away to Leopold James Fitz, and Jemma walks down the middle of the hall like she’s floating down it, an ethereal, timeless beauty etched in Daisy’s memory, a permanent imprint Daisy couldn’t wipe off the walls of memory, etched in so deep Daisy knew it better than she knew herself.

The priest turns to Fitz. His mom has tears in her eyes, eyes filled with pride as the priest asks Fitz if he was willing to take Jemma Anne Simmons to be his lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death did them part. He replies yes instantly, eyes never leaving Jemma. 

The priest asks Jemma the same question. Did she take Leopold James Fitz to be her lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death did them part. She affirms it, quietly, then boldly, as if she’s still trying to prove her love, as if Jemma didn't know love was infinite, that love couldn't be measured with wealth, or time or confessions, that it was constant, that it was the greatest gift anyone could give, that it was one of the few things in the world that was worth dying over. 

Daisy watches as they kiss, as the consummate their marriage, and she claps and she smiles, and she can’t stop feeling as if something is dying inside of her, slowly, as if it was hope retreating back into the shadows, put on hold as if an indefinite darkness took grasp, twisting her insides as it it was nothing. 

The best damn love stories were tragedies, if Daisy was inclined to wax romantically. They waned and they grew, hiding until they had a reason to become dormant once more, as if they were winter roses blooming among adversity just to prove that they were still alive, that they weren’t totally dead. 

Oh, how that hurt. How it sprung unexpectedly, reminding Daisy of things she couldn't have. 

* * *

 

The receptionist gives Jemma a key upon request, mentioning that Daisy had already gone up while looking at her as if he knew her from somewhere. When she gets to the room, she finds Daisy sleeping peacefully, head tilted awkwardly between the pillows and the blanket, the circles under her eyes glaring prominent under the poorly lit room. She brushes a stray piece of hair out of Daisy’s face, tucking it behind Daisy’s ear softly, the way a loved one did, with all the fondness and affection in the world, and more. 

 _You’re beautiful_ , Jemma wants to tell Daisy, _inside and out_. Because for all the time they've known each other, Daisy had earned a place in her heart as one of her most trusted advisors of all matters, and without knowing it, Daisy had crawled into her heart, grown on her to the point where she’s not sure she wants to live in a world where Daisy Johnson isn’t there, where there isn't a Daisy Johnson for her to confide in, to love. 

But that was what best friends did. That _had_ to be what best friends did: trust each other with their life, trust each other with their entire being, love and adorn each other with platitudes unsaid and unspoken, truths that hung in the air, confessions that no one wanted to tell each other because that meant acknowledging that the extent of their bond, their friendship went deeper than that. 

* * *

 

Daisy stirs sometime after, at around ten twenty or so. Jemma had taken the chair on the desk, reading and rereading the messages scratched onto the old wood desk. There’s hearts with the initials of lovers, dates inscribed, all brimming with stories unknown, references that only few understood, as if they held secrets no one was privy to.

Daisy yawns. “Sh-Jemma, you're here.” She sits up on the bed.

Jemma looks up from the desk. “The receptionist gave me a key.” She pauses a second. “I found you in the room sleeping.” _I didn’t want to disturb you_ goes unsaid.

Daisy makes a shrugging motion. “I fell asleep by accident.” But that’s not the reason either of them are here.

“So, what was it you wanted to discuss?” Jemma asks, curious, cautiously excited. It’s most likely related to AIDA Corp but if it weren’t, she had no problem if she and Daisy did other things, namely making out and sex. Not that she would have told Daisy that, of course. 

“I was researching AIDA Corp, and I found something that might be of interest.” Daisy gets up from the bed and pulls her computer out of her bag. She opens it up, showing Jemma a screenshot of a portal that asked for a username and password. “They have this login area, not for the regular login area where you can buy phones and other tech. I was looking through their website code, and they’d had this whole area which made no sense. It had no purpose.” A pause follows. “There’s this link in the code that only activates if you're on a computer in the building. It doesn’t work outside, I tried it on a laptop and it corroded the hardware to the point where it just broke.”

“But that’s not all, is it?” Jemma asks, looking over the screenshot with anxiety and dread. 

“We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t, Simmons.” Daisy replies. “It’s framework code that allows the portal to work. I didn’t look into it further, didn't want to be recognized as the person who hacked into it in the first place.” Among other reasons, as always, goes unspoken. Jemma grabs Daisy’s hand and grips it tight, as if she doesn’t dare let herself let go. 

“Do you think they’d be able to track us, Daisy?” Jemma asks, an undertone of apprehensiveness in her voice.

“We’re tracked every day with tech so I’m sure if you connect framework tech to everything around us, yeah.” Daisy says it with heavy voice, because she’s well thought this over and she knows what happens. how easy they could be tracked, especially if you included data from the framework. 

“I don’t want to go back to the framework.” Jemma replies quietly, dread coloring her voice, the kind of worry that spoke of long term anxiety. It’s only meant for Daisy to hear. “Not now, not ever.” The framework is the worst kind of hell, the kind of eternal damnation that if applied right turned everyone into believers. It’s when the worst vices of humanity take control of the trajectory of human curiosity and use it to create demons of unspeakable horrors, when the worst of human nature manifests itself in the relentless pursuit of discovery without consultation. 

It’s intimately familiar to the two of them, in how they could recall it easily, in how they would shake at a reference or joke and end up spending days trying to get it out of their heads, only to find that those kinds of trauma stayed with you, that they haunted your dreams as the night demons that inspired true terror. Jemma tries to block out the images of the framework out of her mind—Trip alive, Jeffrey Mace dying, The Doctor, finding the demon spawn Ward again, and everything, _everything_ that had happened comes to a blur in her memory, this terrible yet beautiful integration of past and present coming together to form the most horrific composite she has ever laid her eyes on—and fails. She always fails.

Daisy, sensing this, hugs Jemma, because she knows what Jemma’s been through and that the best thing they can do right now is comfort each other the best they can. Words would never be sufficient to express their anguish, and that was something they knew, a truth carved deep into their bones. “Simmons, you want to go to bed? The room’s rented for the rest of the night and I don't think we should leave around now. The cops are patrolling the area looking for drug dealers right about now.” Jemma nods.

* * *

 

The bed is more comfortable under the blanket than above the blanket, Daisy finds out. Jemma had taken the left side of bed, and Daisy had taken the right, although Daisy’s sure Jemma would start leaning on her pillow eventually. Jemma breathes softly on Daisy’s shoulder, inhaling and exhaling, making her shoulder feel warmer than it was. 

“Simmons, you can lean on me if you like.” The invitation, sitting in the air expectantly, becomes vocal and Jemma leans her head closer to Daisy, scooting herself next to her. It’s the comfortable sort of silence, the kind that spoke of familiarity, of a bond time tested and strengthened by shared struggles together, the kind that translated to an intimacy that could never be broken. 

Jemma falls asleep quickly, and that’s more due to exhaustion and stress than it is Jemma really wanting to fall asleep. Daisy drifts in and out, eventually falling into a deep sleep after some time. They sleep without disturbance.


	5. part five: nothing's gonna change, not me and you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Daisy thinks of her and Jemma, Jemma buys Daisy breakfast and Daisy and Jemma inadvertently discuss their feelings.

There’s a strange comfort in darkness, almost as if it was cleansing, like it was a rebirth. Maybe that’s why confession took place alone in the dark: there’s no false pretenses involved when you’re alone in the dark telling your sins to the priest listening in. 

That wasn’t entirely true. Daisy hated confession. There’d always been something about it that bothered her; it had helped the other kids, made them feel better that they weren’t orphans per se, they were children of God, that God loved them in His infinite grace, and Daisy had always thought that had been a cheap way for the nuns to give affection to the kids in the orphanage. That if they couldn’t give the love they needed, God would. 

She didn’t trust the idea, found it funny. How was a being in the sky meant to give comfort when all there was of Him was some old book filled with stories that hardly made sense and teachings that she scoffed at internally. If there was this love for everyone, if there had been anything like it, then why didn’t the same benevolent God that led Isaac and led Moses lead the orphans to happiness at the orphanage? Give them good foster parents, give them the comfort they sought that no one could, give them some sign that hey, their parents were out there looking for them and that they weren’t screw ups that resulted from sex, placed at the front steps of the orphanage with a birth certificate or a sheet of paper giving their name and date of birth. Sometimes, there wasn’t even that. She knew of one girl that had been placed at the front steps of the orphanage with nothing to her name, with a store bought blanket in a baby pink. _I’m nothing_ , she had once told Daisy, _as are you_. Daisy had laughed at the sentiment then, and she looks back at it in a mixture of pity and anger now. 

It’s food for thought, anyway. Daisy can feel Jemma sleeping next to her, breathing quietly as she seemed to sprawl her way onto Daisy. Jemma’s hair tickled her neck, her head leaning on her shoulder. Her arm sneaked it’s way around Daisy, and it’s like Jemma’s the big spoon of the two. Daisy shakes away the thought in her head that this could be them one day, all the time, because she knows Jemma Simmons, and Jemma Simmons loved Fitz like he was the sun to her moon. Well, Jemma Anne Simmons technically, but Jemma had told her her middle name one night they had gone out drinking, and Jemma had been drunk, sipping her beer and giggling at the football screen. It was probably best not to remind Jemma of that, since it had been so long ago, when Daisy was Skye, and neither of them had been through hell and back, and besides, there wasn’t a real point. 

It wasn't like anything was going to change between the two of them and their midnight meetings, because goddamn, Daisy knew Jemma wanted comfort, Jemma wanted security, Jemma wanted epic love confessions that reminded her that she had a beating heart within her that wasn’t totally hardened from the times it had been broken, that she needed reminders that she was whole, that she wasn’t a mosaic composed of broken pieces of glad shattered beyond all recognition. Daisy embraced it, held it to her chest because it was a truth and Jemma deflected that truth, preferring to blind herself by giving broken relationships everything she had, because she didn’t know how to stop, and if she took the time to just _breathe_ she might just figure out what she needed. 

But that had been the thing between them, forever and always, that made them different. Daisy knew the reality of situation. Daisy knew that life sucked, that it was fundamentally unfair and all she could do was attempt to make it better for other people, and Jemma, Jemma denied that with everything she had, because she didn't want to hear her her own inner pities crying out for help, crying out for aid. 

Daisy was convenient, one call away and Jemma had everything she needed for the night, someone to hold, someone who’d stay by her mentally and physically. It’s a shitty situation for the both of them, Daisy being a stand in for Jemma, and Jemma having to find love in all the odd and mismatched places, but there’s something that keeps them coming back, something that compels them to do it again one more time. 

Daisy calls it a crush she never got over. It’s more like a slow burning love that she lets herself indulge fantasies in, that maybe, one day she could have this all the time instead of in the queen sized bed of a shitty motel for one night. She’s not exactly sure what Jemma gets out of this, besides screwing someone that isn’t the husband whose rarely home. 

It’s a recipe for disaster, sure, but it’s just a fling. It’s meant to mean nothing to them, _meant_ being the key word there, and if anything did result from it, deflect the truth, feel miserable about it, and do it all over again. Rinse, lather and repeat.

* * *

 

The morning sneaks in silently and sunlight illuminates the curtains of the room. It creeps in, rays of sunlight that weren’t there one minute and there the next, reflecting light from one surface to another. Daisy opens an eye and find sunlight across the blanket, Jemma missing from the said blanket. There’s a paper bag with muffins on it sitting on the bedside dresser, a cup of coffee next to it.

Daisy gets out of bed, dragging the clothes she packed out of her bag on her way to the bathroom to shower, and upon making it to the bathroom, finds a note on the sink. ‘ _Taking a call- be back shortly! xoxo, Jemma_.’ Probably calling Fitz, Daisy guessed. They had the whole long distance thing mostly down, with Jemma inevitably calling or texting her at every hour of the day to direct and discuss every detail. Was he eating? How was his hotel? How was flight? Would he be busy later on in the evening? How was he feeling?

With thoughts like those, Daisy wanted to tell Jemma that was what his mother and/or potential counselor would worry about, not his wife to _that_ extent. It’s like a scene straight of Death of A Salesman really, with the whole 1950s idea of marriage. Not that Daisy would tell Jemma, even though she’s seen it happen. 

The shower is quick and Daisy takes the coffee just the way she likes it. With a dab of cream and a little sugar, though the sugar was more or less optional given Daisy usually took the cream and went. The muffins were lemon poppyseed flavored and when Daisy’s done with the muffins, she throws the wrappers back into the bag and throws the bag into the nearby trashcan. It’s nine thirty-five, five minutes after Daisy finished her breakfast, when Jemma comes back in, cheeks flushed and eyes alight with happiness. 

“Morning, Daisy.” Jemma greets cheerily, her black shirt with white polkadots tucked into her jeans. Her bag sits by the door, zipped neat and tidy. “I woke up early but the only muffins they had for breakfast were lemon poppyseed. They didn’t have any other selection, sorry.”

Daisy gives a light laugh. “Don’t worry Simmons, it’s fine. Thanks for the coffee, you’re a life saver.” Jemma beams at her. “So, how’d the call with Fitz go?”

“He’s doing fine, he was taking a twenty minute break from a conference he was having with the Uber board. He says that their lunch was lacking,” Jemma adds, “which is certainly understandable, so he went to the nearby indian restaurant and ordered a curry.”

“So it went good.” Jemma liked to ramble when it came to Fitz: his highs were her highs when Jemma wasn’t telling her what was happening behind the scenes, and his lows were her lows, which meant when something went wrong, Jemma called her to complain just how unfair a board of directors had been, criticizing them harshly and severely questioning their credentials. 

Jemma affirms the statement. “Yes, certainly. I wish he was home, of course, but if work insists on him going across the globe, then there’s nothing that can be done.” She pauses. “Daisy, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” 

“Yeah, no problem. What’s bothering you?” Daisy expects it, Jemma more often than not came to her for advice regarding Fitz, anything and everything related to Fitz. From when Jemma needed help picking a dress for a work function: _you’re a neutral eye Daisy, and I need your counsel. Now tell me, would this dress work better in deep red or black? There’s a gala we’ve been invited to and I don’t trust Fitz to help me with dress shopping_.

Jemma pauses, almost as if she’s reconsidering. She always did that when she was expressing her doubts: second guessing herself, trivializing them as though they meant nothing to her, as though they were insignificant, worthless emotions she sometimes refused to let herself feel. “Do you think I made the right decision, Daisy? Mum told me when we talked on Tuesday that she had been surprised, _surprised_ , that I had chosen to get married so soon.”

“Did she explain why she was surprised? Or..” Daisy lets the thought trail off, she knew where this train of thought went. Which, in her opinion, Jemma had been rushing it, but she didn’t blame Jemma for wanting absolution for the time being. 

“No, but I assumed it was because she thought me and Fitz had been dating for such a short period of time. Can you imagine it, Daisy? Fitz and I have been friends, classmates, for half my life, we know each other very, very well.” Jemma puffs, held irritated half contemplative. “She thought I was unprepared for marriage, can you imagine?”

“Well, to be fair, Jemma, Fitz spends half his time on planes traveling between meetings. I wouldn’t call that much of marriage, more like a shell of a marriage.” Daisy offers, knowing that Jemma would listen to it from her, and no one else.

“But even then, Daisy! We’re legally married, we have a _wonderful_ life together and I very much enjoy being his wife! We spend our holidays going back to Seychelles and Scotland to see his mum, and we go to his old church sometimes and he introduces me as his wife. That is hardly a poor excuse of a marriage!” Jemma lists, getting increasingly upset. “I don’t understand, Daisy, how my mum can imply my marriage is _empty_.”

“Jemma, what’s really wrong?” Daisy asks, implores. “I know you, and I know how much effort you put into your marriage with Fitz. But that isn’t what’s really bothering you.” Daisy pauses, watching Jemma digest what she has to say. “What’s the matter?”

“I-I was talking to one of my scientists during break one day and they mentioned that their husband was loving, kind, generous. Daisy,” Jemma voice quivers, “he came home, every single day. And, and if he couldn’t, he would always tell her he loved her.” She’s quieter now. “Every day, Daisy. And Fitz, my Fitz, he works so much and he never comes home every day. I want to be happy for him, I really do, but I can’t, I can’t Daisy. Not when the cost is him in some foreign city, in some foreign country without me.” Her body shakes as she says this and Daisy draws her into a hug as Jemma holds on for dear life, as if Daisy was her life line to reality, as if Daisy was all she had next to her. 

“Daisy,” Jemma continues, “you’ve always been there and I am truly, genuinely unable to express thanks for all that you’ve done for me. You’ve never left, not when you could have, and thank you, _thank you_ for that.” Jemma holds onto Daisy tightly, not wanting to let go. “I had this dream once, that I was stumbling in the dark. And it seems silly, it feels silly to say, but you were the light at the end of the tunnel. It was like you were how my story ended.”

Jemma gives a nervous laugh, wiping the tears off her face. “It’s silly, isn’t it Daisy? I didn’t want to believe it at first, the sight of you guiding me to safety, but something about it felt familiar.”

Daisy fakes a laugh. “Yeah, silly.” They sit down on the bed, Daisy next to Jemma and Jemma next to Daisy side by side. “Listen, Jemma. Fitz loves you, God, he loved you much he dove into a hole in the universe to save you.”

Jemma adds. “It was Fitz’s fault that I was trapped there to begin with, not that I blame him. He was so excited at the possibility of us going on a date he forgot to close the latch.”

“Well, aside from that. And I’m fairly sure that’s a failure of basic lab protocol.” Daisy shifts a little, and Jemma moves her hand, as though to match that shift. “He loves you so much it hurts. He’s always going to come back to you, no matter what.”

“But what if I don’t love him anymore, Daisy? What if I fall out of love with him? He’s been gone so much it feels like I don’t have a boyfriend, much less a husband.” She comments in amusement. “In that respect, you’ve been more of spouse, a girlfriend, a wife, perhaps. Not that I’ve entertained that thought before.” Jemma brushes it off quickly, as though it were an afterthought and nothing of significance. 

“I wouldn’t put it as that as much as occasional fuck buddy myself, Simmons. It’s better that way, just focussing on the sex. The emotions make it too complicated.” _Besides_ , Daisy wants to add, _you just called me your wife_. 

 “But do they really, Daisy? Wouldn’t it be easier if we just discussed feelings?” Jemma smiles softly. “Our visits have hardly been strictly business.”

“Jemma,” Daisy wants to shake her head but refrains, “you’re married. I’m sure we shouldn’t even be this position, much less be discussing our feelings. Discussing our feelings makes it personal, and that’s something this fling, whatever this is, doesn’t need.” Daisy mulls. “You’re happy with Fitz and I’m happy being single. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“Daisy,” Jemma pushes, “I want you to be happy. You’ve always wanted me to be happy, and you’ve always encouraged me to be brave. To be willing to fly without fear of falling.”

Daisy smiles absentmindedly at the memory. “I told you I’d be there to catch you if you fell. But Jemma, honestly? That’s romantic bullshit. That doesn’t change anything between us, fuck, none of this has. You’re still married and I’m still just your best friend. Nothing’s changed between the two us, God.”

“Daisy, you’re ignoring my question.” Jemma replies, sharp as a tack. “And it doesn’t matter what happens between us, whether we shag or don’t shag, whether I love you as a sister or more, _none of that matters_. You are one of my closest friends. You have always been there for me, and I want you to be happy. I want the same thing for you the same thing you want for me. I care for you, Daisy. I care for you immensely, so please, please let me in.”

“I have let you in, you know that.” Daisy keeps herself on the defensive, because she’s not sure her heart can handle any more of this. 

“Daisy,” Jemma’s voice softens, “you’re shutting me out. I don’t know what you’re feeling, and I want to help. Please let me help.” Her voice is weary, laced with a heartfelt plea. “Daisy, why are pushing me away? Why aren’t you telling me how you truly feel? You don’t have to tell me truth, just tell me _something_.” 

“Jemma,” Daisy tells her, tone weary and bittersweet and eyes seeming to be brimming with tears, “you know how I feel about you. You already know how I feel about you.”

“Dammit Daisy, that’s not an answer! That doesn’t explain anything!” Jemma seems to scream, frustrated and almost angry. 

Daisy shifts her position on the bed. “It’s an answer, and that’s what you asked for. You never said I had to tell you the truth.”

“I wanted the truth, Daisy. I wanted the truth, no matter how ugly or complicated it is, no matter how much of a toll it takes on us.” Her plea goes unsaid, _why aren’t you letting me in? What is stopping you from letting me in?_ She tries again. “Daisy, you don’t have to tell me today or tomorrow. But when you feel ready, I will be there to listen, no matter how much it breaks our hearts.”

Daisy kisses her on the lips, softly and lightly, as if Jemma was a ceramic figure that was easily breakable. It’s not a short kiss, but it’s not a long kiss either. “You asked me what I needed to be happy, and that was what I felt about you. That’s my answer. I’ll always be there to catch you, no matter what happens between us.” 

Jemma asks, breathlessly, as if she was stuck in the moment. “And if I want to fly?”

“Then I’ll be there, ready to catch you if you fall. And I’ll be there, flying by your side.” Daisy smiles, bittersweetly, as if she was getting ready for her heart to be broken once more.

“Forever and Always?” Jemma searches her eyes for the same absolution she searched Will’s eyes for, the same absolution she searched Fitz’s eyes for, looking for the same promise of forever that she yearned to have, her red string of fate constantly searching for the person who would keep it safe. 

Daisy nods, her emotions threatening to bubble over. “Forever and Always.” 

They leave soon after that, Daisy barely keeping her face emotion free as she left for her apartment, and Jemma looking as though she was blinking back tears herself. 

* * *

 

That night, Jemma dreams of Daisy, right next to her no matter what happened. It’s a dream she can’t properly describe, either from her own reluctance or her mind making it so vivid that Jemma doesn’t want it to end. When it does, however, Jemma blinks back tears, and takes a shower at two in the morning because she doesn’t know _why_ she’s crying from a stupid bloody dream about her best friend, and she doesn’t understand why she can’t just move on from the morning like it was nothing, like it was meant to be nothing.

 _Daisy’s just a friend_ , she tells herself, _Daisy is just a friend_. But the bond she and Daisy was beyond what she could express: it was like Daisy was the half of her she didn’t know how to live without, and it felt difficult breathing, as if she had lost something vital inside her heart, as if someone had tore it out from her chest and stomped all over it, leaving her broken mosaic heart visible for everyone to see. 

* * *

 

Daisy doesn’t sleep that night, working from six in the evening to three in the morning with only bathroom breaks in between. She tosses and turns in her bed, unable to fall asleep or keep her heartbeat calm as the thoughts of Jemma consumed her without end, ceaseless as she held onto memory after memory of Jemma, burning them, searing them into her memory as permanent landmarks she couldn’t take her eyes off of. 


	6. part six: say something, like you wanna love me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jemma thinks and debates the conflicts of her heart.

Fitz arrives home on Monday, on a morning flight. That’s what Jemma tells herself as she leaves the motel, driving at or above the speed limit. Her sunglasses on, not because it was sunny, but because she feared if they weren’t on, everyone would be able to the tears that brimmed her eyes, threatening to spill like a river, an infinite number of water molecules sticking to each other as they traversed the world by current.

Above all, Jemma was confused. Perhaps that wasn’t the best understanding of what she and Daisy had just discussed, perplexed. Bewildered. Flummoxed. It was as though she had understood what Daisy was discussing, but she didn’t fully comprehend it. Daisy hadn’t chosen to elaborate either, and so Jemma’s trying to decipher the pieces herself.

Daisy had been _off_ that morning and Jemma couldn’t pinpoint why. It wasn’t how Daisy dressed, she had dressed like she usually did, clothes dark with her hair down, light make up and her gauntlets in her bag wherever she went, nor what is it anything physical. Off kilter, as if Daisy wanted to tell her something and didn’t. As if Daisy was carrying a secret with her that she didn’t want to tell her. 

Jemma knows she isn’t entitled to knowing how Daisy felt, or that she understood what it was like to be Quake, the Destroyer of Worlds. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be a biracial woman with a Chinese mother and an American father, both of whom were awful people, nor what it was like to have powers. She could try as she might, but she and Daisy had had entirely different life experiences that shaped them in ways neither of them could expect.

She’s known Daisy for a long time, however, and she doesn’t understand this. She can _read_ Daisy, read her the same way she could the other members of her team. She knew what it was that Daisy liked, her black lace underwear among that category, and what Daisy didn’t like, such as people who opposed protecting inhumans for any sort of reason. The Watchdogs, among other groups.

Jemma drives home trying to figure out a puzzle she already knows the answer to. In most regards, it’s a case of her refusing to acknowledge the answer, since it couldn’t possibly be true.

* * *

 

Lunch is nonexistent. Jemma isn’t hungry, she tells herself as she sits in the kitchen of a house too big for one person, and tries not to feel overshadowed by the walls that are crushing her and taunting her with memories of people she can’t be with, with people she can’t contact right now. Or won’t, because Daisy Johnson’s phone number sits on the tips of her finger and the tips of her tongue and there is nothing more she would like to do than call Daisy one more time, to properly talk things out, to explain the kiss Daisy had given in lieu of an answer.

It’s an odd kiss, of all the ones she and Daisy had shared. Not sweet, leisurely, teasing, but not rushed either. It’s not the yearnings of the last kiss before they left, nor is it the kind they’d share in the motel bedroom between the bed sheets.

It’s different. Jemma can’t get it out of her head, how it happened. How Daisy had looked at her with the greatest sadness she had ever seen, how Daisy had looked at her as if Daisy had hung up the stars for her, and she wasn’t there to appreciate them. Daisy had looked at her as if Jemma had stolen her heart, captured it and kept it locked under layers upon layers of defense. How Daisy had leaned to kiss her as if it was a kiss of regret, as if it was a kiss of a future they could never have. Daisy’s answer shakes her to the core, even now. Forever and Always, Daisy had promised her, and in her stomach Jemma can feel the school girl crush she had always had on boys when she was in primary school.

Daisy had given her a kiss of what could have been. In that moment, Jemma could have sworn she heard her heart drop, she heard her heart break, and she didn’t know why. She feels like Lady Macbeth: scrubbing blood off her hands that wasn’t there, valiantly trying to feel clean, to feel whole, all while she could sense something slipping away slowly and surely, and she claws it, wanting it back.

It doesn’t work. Jemma watches the TV listlessly, barely reacting to anything she had seen. It doesn’t feel like she can breathe, the ring on her finger reminds her, The silver banded ring that enclosed a diamond rests upon the ring dinger of her fourth finger, guilting her, taunting her with a guilt complex that would only get worse and worse, and never better.

Maybe, and Jemma tries to ignore this, she shouldn’t have contacted Daisy at all. Maybe, she shouldn’t have asked Daisy to kiss her that night in the motel when she had been feeling lonely, when she had wanted a friend, a companion, someone that would keep her safe for night. Someone she could sleep next to, someone she knew would be there when she woke the next morning. But she had been so lonely, she had been so isolated. Fitz had been working constantly, and if she had told anyone else they would have offered advice and sympathy she didn’t need nor want. 

She knows what mum and dad would say. _Our Jemma_ , her dad shake his head in disappointment, _rushing down the bloody isle just to say she was married for married sake_. Her mum, gently chiding her dad, would make a barely noticeable head shake and tell him, _She has her reasons, love. None of the right reasons of course, but she’s still our daughter. We have to support her_.

She can hear the exchange of coins at the mention of couples therapy, divorce. She can just picture it, her closest friends and family making pitying smiles in her direction in unison, muttering to their friends and inner circle the tale of the poor girl who ran bullheaded into something she didn’t understand and found herself miserable in. 

Jemma wants to scream. She wants to scream at the bloody cosmos, at the bloody universe, to pound upon the doors of a God that didn’t exist and shame him into telling her why she had to suffer. She wants to ask anyone that would listen why, _why_ she had to suffer. Why she was so unhappy, why she felt like she was still drowning in words unsaid, suffocating in the memories of her loved ones, past and present.

 _The bloody cosmos don’t owe us a damn thing_ , she wants to scorn, _and they never have_. She wants to laugh at the absurdity of her situation right now: sitting in a house that she hated, bought to spurge out on the first paycheck, because it was too big for her and demanding answers from the sky she would never get in this lifetime or the next.

The answers around her were murky fog, unclear and hiding all things from view. 

There aren’t any light sources she can find to ground herself, and maybe this was why the lights blinded as much as they guided. They were beautiful, majestic artificial sources of wonder she followed down the road, keeping her safe, but they also tricked her into believing miracles that didn’t exist. The times she and Fitz had spent among those lights, whispering things only they would understand, telling inside jokes and the inner most secrets of the fog watching the lights surrounded that fog they didn’t notice, amazes her now, how she didn’t realize it lurked everywhere, just waiting to catch her on a wrong turn.

She doesn’t know what to feel about Daisy, if she’s being honest. Daisy Johnson, who had always been there for her, who had been one of her most well loved friends and companions, had turned into so much more, as reluctantly as she wanted to believe. Jemma wants to deny this truth, this beautiful, terrifying realization that she cares for Daisy. That she cared deeply for Daisy Johnson, that she was so in love with Daisy that Daisy’s well being had become second nature to hers, and that if time froze, the silly hypothetical went, as long as she had Daisy she would be fine.

It’s more than friendship, Jemma tries to deny, but she can’t. She can’t fix the ugly, glaring holes of her past as much as she’d like to, nor can she change the fates of those she loved, but she can desperately hope that her emotions would fail her. That they would find another way to manifest themselves because Jemma’s not sure she wants to feel this much, that she wants her heart to dictate her every action as it did now.

She misses her days in the Academy, when her belief in science was unparalleled. When what happened in her field was the word of law and she never needed to question if it was done for a good cause. _It was_ , she would believe, in the nativity that came with youth, in the youth she had lost a very long time ago, in the youth she wanted to know better than she knew the scars on her body.

 _But it’s not possible_ , her heart tells her, _the past is past. The past cannot be changed_. 

* * *

 

Jemma takes a shower at three in the afternoon to clear her head. She washes her hair, shampoo caressing her scalp as she ran her fingers through her dark brown locks, going through them throughly. She had all the time in the world, all the time until Fitz’s morning flight on Monday. She runs her hands and her washcloth over her body, over the scars she had accumulated from fights of survival and desperation, kidnapping, abducting, over the bruises she had from dropping a pan onto her foot. They sit there on her body, this motley collection of webbing and continual cell growth that reminded her that life wasn’t static. 

Life was animated, living glory, the glorius struggle that was identity and pain, joy and heartache, exhilaration and affection. Life was the growth of new and the shedding of the old, a gathering of love and loss that grew and grew.

Jemma wishes she could experience it now. Escape all the inner conflicts of the heart and tune them out, but she can’t. Her heart bleeds for what it has suffered, and she cannot stop it from bleeding no matter how hard she tries. Bandaids are never effective against huge, gaping gashes, regardless of how large the bandage was.

She’s going to break Fitz’s heart. She’s going to break Daisy’s heart. She’s going to hurt and betray, just because she was lonely, just because she needed someone to fill the empty part of herself she she didn’t know how to fill. It weighs heavily on her, and maybe sleep would help if she went to bed early. Take some sleeping pills, take some water and head to bed. Tuck herself into a bed made for two and try to ignore how empty one half of the bed was, and fall asleep counting sheep under her breath as her mind worked in overdrive considering the possibilities of what she could do. 

She tries not to wonder what Daisy would have said to that, if Daisy would have sent a sweet text to remind her that she was allowed to feel her emotions and despise them if she so wished. Fitz would have been busy, he never would have responded, But Daisy, Daisy would have responded instantly, and for that Jemma had been ever so grateful.

The shower ends, and Jemma dries her body off, wrapping her hair in a towel for the time being. Television is surprisingly mind numbing if done right, she thinks as she watches one of the many CSI spin offs, and she tries to ignore the frantic beating of her heart. 

 _Bloody emotions_ , _fucking emotions_ , she says out loud, to no one in particular, and no one responds. She hears the silence, the comfortable silence this time, and relaxes her shoulders, breathing easily.

* * *

 

Sleep barely comes to Jemma at night. Her mind, overactive and running nonstop, keeps her awake, and so Jemma stares the ceiling of her and Fitz’s bedroom, asking herself why it was that she couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t that she wanted it, she needed it, and yet it stood far away from her grasp, like sand running between her fingers, smooth and silky, never to be caught.

When it does come, it comes from exhaustion. She rests, only because her body was tired, tired from all the adrenaline that had coursed through her body, raising her average heart rate and sending her mind into overdrive. _Overdrive_ , Jemma thinks to herself in the in-between stages of falling asleep, _that sounded like something Daisy would have worked with_. 

Sleep eludes her that night. Peaceful dreams turned into chaotic storms that rankled her memories, shuffling them into order upon order of an endless mist she couldn’t escape. And finally, at last, Jemma finds herself in some sort of dreamscape. She knows it isn’t real, that it couldn’t possibly be real, but the walls were covered with ancient paintings and stalactites hung from the roof, decorating it with the beauty of deadly things. From a distance, breath taking, and up close, dangerous to touch. 

Jemma’s got to be dreaming, because there aren’t ghosts in this dream. Trip doesn’t show up looking for, Will doesn’t look at her as if she had hung the stars and moon for him, Fitz doesn’t show up to bring her home, and not a single person is with her. She’s alone, and it’s such a foreign experience, finally being by herself, truly alone. Jemma doesn’t think she’s ever been truly alone for a long time, she had always, always had Fitz by her side. And if Fitz wasn’t there, Daisy was always seconds away. 

It’s an odd feeling, being by herself. She’s in a bloody dreamscape surrounded by one of the oldest natural formations of the world, and she listens as water from outside drips down the stalagmites in their full glory, and all she can do is savor the silence. She doesn’t want to break it, nor ruin it. The cave echoes; the last thing she wants right now is have to listen to her own voice wondering what it was that was going on. 

The cave turns darker by the minute, and once more Jemma can feel the walls closing on her. There’s a light source somewhere ahead of her, what appeared to a hole puncturing the walls of cavern, and she races towards it as she stumbles through the dark, trying, trying to reach the improbable ray of hope that offered her an escape.

The escape is Daisy. Daisy, in dark jeans and a black SHIELD jacket, Daisy, grinning at her as she held out a gauntlet enclosed hand, as if they had all the bloody time in the universe, as if Daisy had been there _waiting_ to rescue her. 

Jemma wakes up shaking, tears rolling down her eyes and she can’t understand why.

* * *

 

_Daisy kisses her on the lips, softly and lightly, as if Jemma was a ceramic figure that was easily breakable. It’s not a short kiss, but it’s not a long kiss either. “You asked me what I needed to be happy, and that was what I felt about you. That’s my answer. I’ll always be there to catch you, no matter what happens between us.”_

_Jemma asks, breathlessly, as if she was stuck in the moment. “And if I want to fly?”_

_“Then I’ll be there, ready to catch you if you fall. And I’ll be there, flying by your side.” Daisy smiles, bittersweetly, as if she was getting ready for her heart to be broken once more._

_“Forever and Always?” Jemma searches her eyes for the same absolution she searched Will’s eyes for, the same absolution she searched Fitz’s eyes for, looking for the same promise of forever that she yearned to have, her red string of fate constantly searching for the person who would keep it safe once and for all._

_Daisy nods, her emotions threatening to bubble over. “Forever and Always.”_

* * *

 

Jemma takes another shower. It’s one fifty the morning, the alarm clock reminds her, and Jemma tries not to curse the bloody cosmos for ruining the sleep she never got.

Logically, she decides to take a shower. It’s not even been twelve hours since her last shower, but as the hot water runs over her body, she stops to collect her thoughts. 

What was it she was doing wrong? Why was it that she had to deal with this now? Surely, there had to answers to these questions. Surely, there was a logic in this madness she could trace through a diagram or a process she could follow that had been duplicated elsewhere and that worked. Surely, surely, there was something to this she wasn’t quite getting. Maybe Daisy had changed since their meetings had begun, maybe Daisy had a change of heart, maybe Daisy had found someone and just refused to tell her, to not ruin the surprise. 

But that never mattered, not to her heart. Her heart was wild, unpredictable, and for the longest time Jemma had hated it for its ability to love, for its ability to express itself in a way science never could, not in the scientific jargon of writing papers and anatomically correct terms but to feel, in the metaphorical sense, to feel emotion as strongly as if it could have shaped the world just by caring. 

Her heart stares back at her, this mosaic of memories growing and regrouping over arteries and veins that kept going, blood going pint by pint around her body, and all Jemma can do is stare at it. Stare at the vines that crept around the mosaic pieces, growing over and under them, blossoming in the memories of joy and melancholy, in the worries and the secrets, silver and blue flowers radiating sunlight from every angle.

It’s beautiful. It’s hideous. Jemma can’t take her eyes off of it, watching as it expanded and shrunk, as it kept on living even when she desperately wanted it to stop. She wants to know how the heart kept on loving, how it kept on living when all she wanted sometimes was for it to stop, to turn her emotions off because they hurt, they bled in brilliant vivid shades of red scattered as though they were poppies feeding off of the decaying corpses that had long blended with the ground.

This was life, in it’s hideous glory. Not whole, not complete, but the breaking and remaking of the human spirit time after time, disaster after disaster, picking itself up after it had been shattered, silver and blue flowers dimming only to shine brighter when they were replanted.

Jemma hates it. Jemma wants to ask so many questions, ask how it could do it easily, how it wasn’t dead and broken laying on the floor waiting for someone else to repair it.

And the final question creeps up to her, sneaks onto the tip of her tongue in cold and solid absolutes. What was it that had changed?

It wasn’t her, Jemma tells herself, no, it wasn’t her that had changed. Never mind all that happened between her and Daisy, that had never changed anything.

She comes to her final conclusion not long after, and a dreaded feeling creeps upon her and she grasps the door of her shower to anchor herself, because how could she not have realized this before? How was it that she hadn’t known?

She cared for Daisy, not only as a friend.

She cries and the tears don’t seem to stop.

* * *

 

Jemma loved Fitz, she truly did. He was the love of her life, the man she had given her everything to. In him, she had found a home. She had found security, she had found the infinite love that he gave, and she had given it back, making him shine stronger over time.

But love changes, and the person you love today may not be the person you love tomorrow. That had been what her mum had told her during the wedding, citing the tale of her aunt as a cautionary tale. _My cousin, your aunt_ , _she loved her husband with everything she had_. Her mum stops now, and gives a sigh of disappointment. _Jem, love wasn’t enough_. _They were young and foolish, and their blood ran red. She fell out of love, and her husband loved another woman because she couldn’t provide what he needed to stay_. Her mum had turned to her, eyes sad, and told her with a voice full of regret, _don’t be afraid to admit that you’ve rushed things, darling_. 

Her mum had pulled her into a hug, and whispered into her ear, _there will always be someone out there for you. You don’t need to settle down with the first man who promises you the universe. Or woman,_ mum had mentioned as an afterthought. Her mum had always been fond of Daisy, and Jemma never quite understood why. (Her dad had once looked Fitz in the eye and declared in one word, unimpressive. He then proceeded to show Daisy his prized telescope, telling Daisy he thought she had picked quite an admirable Maid of Honour.)

Jemma didn’t understand the story then, but somehow, it had resonated with her, echoing within her. Jemma wasn’t her aunt, a far cry from her aunt, and still the story had settled in the deep enclaves of her long term memory, as a swan song of sorts. 

Jemma’s not her aunt, but she can’t deny that she had sympathized with her. It had been more than that, an understanding that perhaps, perhaps love wore people out, that it brought people to new challenges they'd never thought they’d conquer. 

But Jemma can’t ignore how unhappy she had been, why she had called Daisy in the first place. Fitz wasn’t home, and she had missed him. Daisy had been there because she was convenient, because Daisy was always there. Daisy had crept up on her, and here Jemma was, trying to understand just how it was she felt about Daisy.

Jemma also cannot deny that there was a part of her that loved Daisy, that wanted more with Daisy. Daisy was a constant comfort. Daisy was reliable, Daisy was only ever one phone call away. And yet, she still loved Fitz.

It would break Fitz’s heart if she told him any of this and so she didn’t. It didn’t matter, it shouldn’t, but Jemma can understand why Daisy had refused to talk about her feelings. Talking about them made them real, tangible, and to ignore them meant that they could be neglected for conventional happiness.

Fitz was all that should have mattered: he was the man of her dreams, the one person who would never leave her, except for all those times he was working overseas, and the person she wanted to have her children with, one day. That one day would come eventually, she thinks wanting to sigh, because every single time Fitz was home none of their discussions ever lead to it. 

Her heart could protest all it wanted, but that was all she had to say about. She had closed that book, ended that debate, and it was no more. 

If only she believed herself. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at chochang!


End file.
